The URLs are human-friendly in that they contain the name of the topic. They also have a unique ID in them, which avoids any duplicate title problems (let alone that duplicate topics should be avoided by a feature that automatically searches for threads with a similar title, as uservoice does).

This sort of thing can be readily done. It just means the server has to run additional database queries to transform the "/suggestions/joomla-mambo-cms-integration" into "/index.php?t=msg&th=6156&start=0&" which is what the PHP actually needs. The existing path-info setup could handle this. These additional calls may, or may not, be welcome.

Alternatively, the program could be set up to auto generate appropriate htaccess files which is a worse idea as it ties things to apache which while being dominant, is not the only game in town.

Frankly, even if the path-info setup couldn't handle it, this is a total red herring and is of absolutely minuscule practical importance within the context of a forum application when you actually think about it.

The only time the "legibility" of the contents of a url may be relevant is when you are posting it as a link somewhere.

In this case I have the following options:

1. Some preceeding context .... Here is a link to a discussion of the joomla-mambo cms integration: hxxp fudforum.org/forum/index.php?t=msg&th=6156&start=0&
2. Some preceeding context .... Here is a link to a discussion of the joomla-mambo cms integration: hxxp fudforum.org/suggestions/joomla-mambo-cms-integration
3. Some preceeding context .... CLICK HERE for a link to a discussion of the joomla-mambo cms integration.

I fail to see where the user would not understand what the url is about in each of the three and there are far more important issues that actually have a real impact to tackle. Perhaps that is why most of the applications you have reviewed persist with this "antiquated" mode.

I have solved this issue by using the PATH_INFO style URLs and then just appending the thread title to the URL, just like Slashdot has sovled it (To decrease database lookups, contrary to how reddit has solved it)

since the final part of the URL doesn't matter, but google etc does not know that, so it works just fine.

How to solve it coding wise is to adjust a few of the rewrites in users.inc.t to understand that the final part of the URL are useless and then just have a function grab the thread/msg title, replace harmful stuff, and then append it to the link with the returned result.

I have solved this issue by using the PATH_INFO style URLs and then just appending the thread title to the URL, just like Slashdot has sovled it (To decrease database lookups, contrary to how reddit has solved it)

since the final part of the URL doesn't matter, but google etc does not know that, so it works just fine.

How to solve it coding wise is to adjust a few of the rewrites in users.inc.t to understand that the final part of the URL are useless and then just have a function grab the thread/msg title, replace harmful stuff, and then append it to the link with the returned result.